Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 9:30PM Since the last posting of this kind we've had six new submissions announced for Oscar's International Feature Film race, bringing the total to 25 thus far. We're tracking both here on the Oscar charts and at letterboxd. (We usually end up around 90 titles but we suspect there will be fewer titles this year due to the pandemic and the resulting cinema chaos.)
Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 8:00PM by Tony Ruggio
Before I was 24 I never used Halloween as an excuse to tout one of my favorite movies. I’ve been a self-described cinephile since the age of 14 and yet somehow it had never occurred to me to dress up as a character from any film, less it was an already uber-famous character like Batman and such. When I discovered that, lo and behold, there were replicas being sold of the iconic scorpion jacket from Drive, I jumped at the chance to purchase one for myself and have some Ryan Gosling cool rub off on me...
Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 1:30PM by Jason Adams
Oh thank the heavens, a leading role for Emma Thompson! It's been too long since we've seen one of those (does Late Night count? I never saw Late Night) and this one sounds like a doozy -- Dame Emma will be starring in a comedy titled Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, which will have her playing a recent widow who decides to spice up her life with all the things she missed during her long marriage, chiefly among them some high quality sexual intercourse. So she finds herself a "sex therapist" in the form of a young man in "his early twenties for a night of bliss." These are Variety's words, not mine -- I would be much, much more vulgar.
As I have no doubt Dame Emma would and perhaps hopefully will be! Her boozy bawdy real-world presence, the one we get to see on red carpets and talk shows, doesn't get utilized nearly often enough on-screen, so the thought of her starring in a proper sex comedy sounds like, well, a, dare I say, "night of bliss." The film will be directed by Austrailian director Sophie Hyde, who made Animals with Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat last year -- no word on other casting yet, but of course our minds turn to the young actor playing the sex worker. Who'd you like to see play opposite this grand Dame?
Emma Thompson Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 11:00AM Before each Smackdown, Nick Taylor looks at alternates to the Oscar ballot...
Happy Halloween!! God, I missed writing these pieces. And I’m so excited to finally discuss a horror film performance, even if The Witches of Eastwick isn’t anyone’s first example of "horror". Probably the purest element of horror in the film - and its best element period - is Veronica Cartwright’s unforgettable turn as the devout, unraveling selectwoman Felicia Alden. An actress possessessing an uncanny ability to give plausible, full-bodied expressions of terror to films as frightening and atmospherically rich as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, her gifts are put to the test in an equally ambitious but more tonally inconsistent film. Felicia surely ranks among the most showcased roles she’s ever had, which is all the more exciting given how different she is from Lambert, though I can’t fathom why her career didn't explode with juicy offers thereafter. Regardless, what she accomplishes here might be the crown jewel of her vivid, horror-cult career...
Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 8:53AM By Glenn Dunks
We tend to focus on new release documentaries around here, covering the gamut of titles premiering in cinemas, on streaming and VOD, and occasionally—as you’ll see over the next few week—festivals. What I rarely have the pleasure of doing is review classic docs, which is probably rather silly since the boom in popularity for the form has meant distributors and exhibitors are getting more confident in not just re-releasing classics documentaries, but restoring them, too.
As I found when researching my top 100 docs of the decade list, even titles from as few as four or five years ago become increasingly hard to find. And if they never received a US release? Even harder. Hopefully that starts to change and all the more reason to celebrate when older works do appear. So, to celebrate the Film Society at Lincoln Centre’s season of films by gay icons Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (until November 5, so get on it!) I wanted to highlight some of the absolute rippers that have come along lately.
There’s everything from S&M lesbians, American cross-country road trips, nuclear bombs, and one Chantal Akerman masterpiece...
